While a low carb lifestyle usually means a lot less sugar and sweetness in your life, there are some decent sugar replacement options out there. If you’re interested in enjoying something sugar-like, one of my favorites is Lakanto’s monkfruit powered golden sugar substitute.

I’ve been using it specifically to sweeten warm beverages (bullet coffee, yellow chai), so cannot currently report on how it behaves during baking. (some sugar alcohols don’t hold up well to the oven – there can be issues with things not browning and a cooling sensation in the mouth can also occur depending on what’s being used…)

We at Pork Banana jumped into the low carb diet “whole hog” – 3 months of keto living is how we got our start. That means we were aiming for 30 net carbs per day. I found it to be a brutal transition from my previous diet.

Nowadays we are living High Fat Low Carb (HFLC) which allows for a generous-seeming 50 net carbs per day. Granted, if we had not lived keto for months, 50 net carbs in a day would not seem any sort of “easy” – it’s all about context. Anyhow, we’ve been figuring out ways to stay in the HFLC zone while not making every single meal and meal component at home, by hand. (We still make a huge amount of our own food each day and would be happy to share some of our favorite recipes, plus tips and tricks)

Now that you’re living low carb (or keto or low glycemic), you might be wondering what you can drink (besides water). Saying goodbye to fruit juice was hard. And nearly anything that is packaged for consumption seems to require extra sugar be added, which piles up the carbs and means much you used to drink will be off limits. Ugh.

Happily, there are some options that either don’t contain any sugar (ginger black tea unsweetened) or you can investigate drinks that use a sugar replacement (diet). There are quite a few sugar alcohol sweetened drink options if you’re wanting something flavorful and sugary seeming. The Bai brand makes a number of tasty drink varieties that are low carb thanks to the sugar alcohol erythritol.

Wow check out this trailer, the special effects will blow your mind! Is that the dude from the A-Team hahahah? This film was made in Hong Kong in 1980 by Godfrey Ho, and not released until 1988 (can’t imagine why). It seems well worth a Saturday matinee viewing doesn’t it?

It rains a lot in Portland during the winter so we tend to watch alot of films! Netflix has really helped this film addiction, and my good buddy JT hipped me to this awesome Korean western. If I learned one thing from this, a decent spaghetti western doesn’t really have to make any sense at all…this movie is a total mess, but it still somehow manages to entertain front to end. Don’t try to follow what is going on, just enjoy the rowdy weird ride.

Police have released this video of the elusive Turtle Shoe Rapist after he was captured for an extended period of time molesting a young hiker who got lost in the woods. He was identified by his signature “victory call of the wild” he emits while performing his insidious acts. While the TSR is extremely horny, he is not very fast, so you should be able to avoid an encounter like this one. If you spot him…please call the police immediately.

So there has been a bit of talk over there in the great cold land of Russia about how we here in the US are headed down the path of civil war and toward a seemingly similar fate suffered there in the largest nation on Earth. Here is a link to the story provided to me by the Laughing Daddy himself who them proclaimed himself to be leading the charge to form our new Republic of Cascadia up here in the Northwest. It does sound pretty sweet, as we will have our own Sasquatch militia which sounds pretty formidable in theory doesn’t it?
I think this asshat may end up disappointed when his absurdist propaganda doesn’t quite pan out as predicted. While I’m not even entirely against the idea of distancing myself from many of the wackos of this great land of ours, you can take that map of yours that shows China ruling the Northwest, and bury it right up your frosty snow hole. This isn’t Russia pal, as much infighting as we have over here…we are still united as a majority in the end. We’ve made mistakes, however in case you didn’t notice, we (unlike Russia) are correcting our own mistakes, and have rallied to elect a leader we feel will bring about positive change. I’ve heard rumors you will be getting your KGB “president” back soon eh? Good luck with that.